


another word for optimism

by GothamGumshoe (CypressSunn)



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Gotham City - Freeform, Slice of Life, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-18 15:28:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28620318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CypressSunn/pseuds/GothamGumshoe
Summary: Dick loves his city.
Kudos: 12





	another word for optimism

Dick likes summers in the city square when the blue-bloods flee to the coast. Likes how it somehow makes everything feel less crowded without the one-percenters and influencers nosing in on the regular dives and budging lines at the food truck courtyard. In the sweltering heat, the air sticks to bodies like fog on glass, but still there’s enough elbow room for everyone, everyone who really wants to be here. From the Browning Bridge to old Falcone docks down to Amusement mile.

After work, Dick’s likes heading down to the bodega on the corner of West 7th and Friar Row. There they keep the sports channel rolling above the freezer full of cartoon bubble gum-eyed ice cream bars. The _Griffins_ are losing to the _Meteors_ again, because well, some things never change. Except Señor Benjamín is not as young as Dick remembers. He can’t lift his trusty pipe wrench like he used to on account of his stiff neck and hunched back. Can’t crack open the red fire hydrants to flood the boulevard and let the little ones cool their feet. But he slides Dick’s change across the counter and leaves the wrench within reach, and with a tacit head nod, he entrusts Dick with an honor higher than any cowl he’s ever worn.

Dick likes the way the kids still laugh on this side of the tracks. They never write that in any newspaper or run the clips on the GCNN newsfeed. Not everything is doom and gloom for Gotham youths. That the public schools around here have eradicated truancy, that summer school’s a thing of the past. Who knew free lunches and keeping cops out of the hallways would be the thing that did the trick? (Literally anyone, Dick would argue, but hey, he’ll take the win.) The sidewalks scatter once some good Samaritan calls Fire and Rescue, and Dick’s already hightailed it out of there. He passes Lula Koppel who owns the laundromat, (not her sister Lainey Koppel, who taught him out to use lemon juice to blot out blood stains back when he was undercover as a beat cop) and he winks once. She rolls her eyes but he can’t help it. Redheads have always been his weakness. Make him just a little weak at the knees while he slides into the foot traffic and away from the nuisance of the sirens.

(Dick also doesn’t mind it so much when his old BatComm that he keeps charged in the outlet near his desk for the hell of it lights up before the city lights flicker on. A brusque two work check in. A sign of love.)

Under the cover of night, Dick’s favorite thing is still his rubber soled shoes that carry him over live wire tight ropes. Makes him feel like the fastest thing alive, racing the city’s pulse, chasing it’s nerve endings. He knows where the heart of the city is — Gotham Tower— but part of him is still looking for the cortex, the willful center, the commanding impulse that steers this sleek, lush, flashing ride into ruin and ecstasy, day in and day out. (He’s been looking since he was child. He’ll be looking until he’s as old as Alfred.)

Dick likes hours of patrol where nothing happens. No one’s hurt or lost or bleeding. No screams or tears or panic. Just bass lines from the dorm rooms, late night commuters on and off the subways, lovers saying _hello-goodbye-I-missed-you_ from their doorways. On the good nights, no one needs a hero. On the good nights, Dick isn’t aching sore when he finds his own rooftop, lugging out his mat for sunrise yoga, meditation. Breathes in, breathes out, the daybreaks into something whole. After, he figures he could still order some early bird takeout if he doesn’t feel like the pepper goulash from the Hungarian place leftover in the fridge, next to Missus Lumas’s _pirogo_. Or slip back through the skylights into his civvies and call an old fashioned black and yellow cab and go… anywhere.

Or perhaps he’ll just stay in, greet his apartment with a roll of his shoulders, flick on the air conditioner, and flop down in bed. Lay at rest beneath the vintage poster of _The Flying Grayson’s_ he found in a thrift shop on Monteith and bought for a buck fifty, frame and all.


End file.
